I think Jaws 2 was decent. 3 was awful and 4 was an abortion.

I saw Psycho II many years ago, and I don’t think it was nearly as bad as any of the Jaws sequels.

Pointless trivia: I actually went to the same school (Haileybury) as the director of that film, Richard Franklin, who died a couple of years ago.

Superman 2… (3 and 4 after)

I just happened to catch a bit of Superman 4…. sorry, I meant ‘Superman IV: The Quest for Peace’, the other night.

There was a scene where Superman was addressing the UN about his desire to rid the world of nuclear weapons (or something). Good grief. You couldn’t believe this was supposed to be taken seriously.

Margot Kidder in a recent interview said that Reeve on this film (who had story credit) was taking himself too seriously and after seeing that, there’s plenty of evidence of that.

I’m talking about a classic movie with all of its sequels being bottom-of-barrel bad.

There’s a couple of contenders from the 1960s.

‘The Magnificent Seven’ is one of the most iconic Westerns and still highly remembered 50 years after it was made, but even its most ardent fans probably wouldn’t know that three sequels to it were made in 1966, 1969 and 1972 – all of them are considered so mediocre that they’re totally forgotten today. You Brynner appeared in the first sequel but the following two sequels didn’t have any members of the original cast!

Similarly, ‘The Heat of the Night’ was an enormous success back in 1967, beating out a very strong field to win the Best Picture Oscar. But few are aware that two sequels were made with Poitier in the early 1970s that are considered nowhere near the quality of the original film. Amusingly, the first sequel is actually called ‘They Call Me MISTER Tibbs!’

The Alien films may have had a steady decline, but at least one of the sequels was good (Aliens). I’m talking about a classic movie with all of its sequels being bottom-of-barrel bad.

I’d say the Alien franchise is pretty close in terms of decline in quality to Jaws (from Ridley Scott and James Cameron to AVP).

Superman 2 was not the original film in the series, and besides, I thought it sucked. Certainly not in the class of Jaws.

Same for Nightmare on Elm Street. Maybe it was good for its genre, but not on the level of Jaws, not a classic film.

Star Wars had two good sequels, and though the prequels were profound mediocrities, they weren’t putrid like the Jaws sequels.

Star Wars….(The Prequels)

Nightmare on Elm Street…. (Nightmare 1,2,3,4,5….how many were there?)

Brian, the Blu-Ray for Psycho is scheduled to be released in October.

Yeah, but I’m worried. Universal has a history of screwing up their catalogue Blu-ray transfers.

Juan, what is the best film ever made?

But I used to have the letterboxed VHS tape and in those days I probably watched it a couple times a year. Like you say, I can’t really imagine seeing it from an innocent 1960 point of view, as I don’t think that the vast majority of people had seen anything at that time that could have possibly prepared them for it. It could never have the same effect now.

Still, they must have known something was up. The name of the movie is “Psycho”, after all, and aside from that salacious hotel room scene that starts the movie, the first half-hour or so is almost impossibly banal. But then Hopkins shows up and the movie turns on a dime from a goofy crime picture to something much more undefinably sinister. By the time the shower scene happens, they must have known that something REALLY BAD was coming, even if the shock of the scene itself caught them off guard.

I found Breathless obnoxious.